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OTTAWA—They talked about it before the game. Misfits, they called themselves. The Toronto Argonauts had been in last place the year before, and so many of them had to be discarded before they were here. This was a last-place team that didn’t have a coach or general manager until March, and then was flung together. The Calgary Stampeders were heavy favourites. The Argonauts drew fewer than half as many fans as those guys, all season. Misfits.

“The forgotten toys,” said offensive lineman Chris Van Zeyl, who had to be cut by Montreal before he was an Argo. “You know what I mean?”

With five minutes left Sunday in the 105th Grey Cup, the Stampeders were up eight points. They hadn’t trailed all game. On a snowy night in Ottawa, a strange night, a very Canadian night, the Argos couldn’t quite get in the game. They had a chance to fall on a fourth-quarter fumble that could have changed everything; the Stampeders got it, and Bo Levi Mitchell threw a 50-yard pass. Calgary blew this game last year, and they were close to sealing this one. On the Argos sideline they got to miracle territory. Hope for a miracle, because that was all that was left.

“I’ve been in several Grey Cups that have ended some crazy ways, that were shocking, I promise you that,” Argos general manager Jim Popp said. “And I’m sitting there going, you know what? We’re going to pull this off. And I felt that way all week.”

“Just praying. Everybody’s praying,” said receiver DeVier Posey, who caught seven passes for 175 yards and was named the game’s MVP. “Pretty sure God was ready to hang up the phone.”

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This Argonauts team shouldn’t have been here. They were stitched together, with Popp and head coach Marc Trestman trying to make up for lost time. Trestman never raised his voice, never tore them apart, even when they started 4-7. He kept at it. Quarterback Ricky Ray kept at it. They couldn’t draw a real crowd at BMO Field. They all kept going.

The Argos were a last-place team without a coach or a GM until March. That's where the story of Sunday's Grey Cup begins. (Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

And then a ball fell on the ground. Calgary’s Kamar Jorden got hit inside the 10, and a split-second before his knee hit the turf the ball came out. Cassius Vaughn got cut by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in May, along with five other guys, and the Argos picked him up. He grabbed the ball and ran, weaving, accompanied. He ran 109 yards. A few seconds later, the game was tied. If miracles happen, that was one.

“I didn’t actually see it, to be honest with you,” Van Zeyl said. “I had my face in my hands, and I was praying. And Bo Levi Mitchell’s a great quarterback.” He looked up. “All I can say is our defence balled out. They changed this game for us. I’m looking up at the scoreboard, and I still don’t know how this happened.”

The defence got Ricky Ray the ball back and he made the throws, the same throws he’s been making for 16 years. His offensive line held off the Stampeders monsters who had made the first three quarters a series of attempted escapes. The field goal went through. The Stampeders had 49 seconds and they drove to the Toronto 25. Mitchell wasn’t scared, and he took a shot at the end zone.

He probably shouldn’t have. Because he didn’t see the little guy in the middle of the end zone, the one who saw the ball coming. He didn’t see Matt Black. Toronto 27, Calgary 24, for the 17th Grey Cup in Argos history.

“It’s so special,” said Black, an Argo since 2008, still cradling the ball he intercepted. “It’s so special being a part of this group.”

“What about his story?” Trestman said. “I cut him. I cut him (on Aug. 1), and I wouldn’t have brought him back, but he left with class. He didn’t burn any bridges, and he’s got a message to send somebody. You don’t always get what you want, but you deal with it with class. And then a door opens. And you say, that guy’s got class, he can come back. And he’s got a story to tell that nobody can ever take away from him.”

That’s what the Argos won. They went from last place to a group of guys thrust together and stitched together by a coach who told them — and it sounds hackneyed, it really does — to love each other. Posey said, “I think what we proved was that love wins. I remember when we lost a few games, and coach Trestman said, I’m not going to rip you guys. I’m going to show you good plays. And we’re going to be better. Let’s work on each other. Let’s fight harder for James (Wilder), let’s block harder for James. And it’s just, he shows love. I don’t know how else to say it. In life, in football.”

“Everybody had so much love for each other, and coach Trestman set that up for us,” said Ray, whose cool exterior finally cracked. “It just felt like this team was too special for it to end any other way for us.”

They were surrounded on the slippery cold field by their parents and children, their brothers and sisters, their teammates and friends, in a place of pure unexpected elation. Linebacker Marcus Ball said, “Calgary is a damned awesome, awesome, great team. But you know what? We Grey Cup champs. Quote that.”

Team president Michael Copeland, glassy-eyed, his wife and two daughters at his side, tried not to cry.

“I’m really proud of everybody in our organization that believed we could do this,” Copeland said. “The game was like the season. Ups and downs, times you had to have faith, times you have to believe. The guys never gave up. And we’re champions.”

Calgary, meanwhile, spilled their guts on the floor. They were haunted by that loss to Ottawa last year, and it followed them all year, and they thought this time it would be different. They will see the 100-yard pass that beat a corner, Tommie Campbell, who hadn’t been burned like that all season. They will see Jorden’s fumble, and they will see the last pass Bo threw. They will see the field goals that vanished with both plays, in a game they lost by a field goal.

“We’ve got a great organization, great management,” Calgary coach Dave Dickenson said. “We’ve got winners on our team, great football players, great staff. Lot of good things there. We just can’t seem to find a way to get that ring.

“I couldn’t give them much, I really couldn’t. It was too fresh, too hard. Any words I say will not resonate. They’re just words. Words don’t win. Actions do. Man, that was a tough one. It’s going to hurt. And the problem is, you can’t change what happened, you can’t change the past. So don’t forget to live, go forth, do what you’ve got to do.”

“It’s just a tough, tough loss for our team. It just didn’t happen for us.”

But it happened for Toronto. This was a great week in Ottawa. The town that never gets called fun was tremendous. The area around the stadium was a party. This town has what Toronto wants, football-wise. It has fans. It has a community.

Toronto, though, delivered this to the fans who have stuck with this franchise through the lean years, the absurd years, the years where being an Argos fan got lonelier and lonelier. The misfits. Trestman was discarded by the NFL and came back here, and he told these players to love one another.

And he won.

“We all have our wounds,” Trestman said. “And we’ve talked about that along the way. And what I’m most proud of is every guy now has a story. That they can share with people that they love, and who will listen. And it’s a good story. And it never goes away. And that’s what this is all for. It’s not for the ring, it’s not for the championship. It’s for the testimony that if people come together they can become part of something bigger than themselves. And it’s a real story.”

“Misfits,” Posey said. His arms were inside his championship T-shirt, and he shivered in the cold, but he wanted to live this, because it was real. “We’ve all been told no before, and we said we’re going to rely on each other, we’re going to love each other.”

“Look what it got us. Eternity, etched in stone, for life. I’ll never forget this.”

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